Chongqing

史History & character

Chongqing was a Sichuan prefecture for most of its history but was elevated to a directly-administered municipality in 1997 — the largest in China by area, encompassing 82,000 km² of mountains, river gorges, and outlying counties as well as the dense central city. The city sits at the confluence of the Yangtze and Jialing rivers, on a spine of hills that gives it the most three-dimensional urban geometry in China — multilayer roads, pedestrian bridges connecting rooftops, monorail lines passing through residential buildings.

During the Second World War, Chongqing served as Nationalist China's wartime capital, beyond the reach of Japanese ground forces. The diplomatic district, the Stilwell Museum, the bombed-out caves used as air-raid shelters all date to that period. The dust and fog that earned Chongqing its "city of fog" moniker also made it harder to bomb accurately.

Modern Chongqing has been one of China's fastest-growing cities of the 2010s and 2020s, helped by major automotive investment (Changan), electronics (Foxconn), and the spread of its hotpot brands and net-celebrity tourism. The Three Gorges cruise from Yichang docks at Chaotianmen.